'Please excuse my rudeness,' I said as we settled into our chairs. 'May I offer you some refreshment? No? Well, then now, I am delighted that you should ask me to assist you. How may I help?'
'Well, the essay I must prepare deals with the role of the novelist in society. I must discuss the importance of the novelist and of fiction in the continual changing pattern of the politics of the modem nation state.'
I gulped and quickly decided upon a course of action. 'What is your opinion?' I asked, throwing back the question to him.
'I am somewhat undecided which is why I would welcome another opinion. I am sure that you will agree that it is hardly surprising for a philosopher to use the novel as one of his modes of expression. However, we must of course distinguish the novel proper, such as the works of Jane Austen or of Proust, from the novel of ideas such as Candide or the plain tale such as Moll Flanders and the modern metaphysical tale of which there are innumerable examples. The novelist proper is in his way a kind of phenomenologist for he has always implicitly understood, what the philosopher has grasped perhaps less clearly, that human reason is not a single, unitary tool, the nature of which could be discovered once and for all. The novelist has had his eye fixed upon what we do and not upon what we ought to do or must be presumed to do. He has the natural gift of a precious freedom from rationalism which the academic thinker achieves, if at all, only by a precarious discipline. The writer of fiction has always been a describer rather than an explainer. Would you not agree, Andrew, with such a hypothesis?'
I struggled for words for, truthfully, the only word I fully understood was 'tool' and in his context I knew that Paul was not using the word in its vulgar form. 'I'm sure you are right, old fellow. Do continue,' I said, settling myself down in my chair for a nap. Even during the early years of my life I had learned a simple yet important rule which was that when people asked you for advice they desired not your true opinion but, in reality, a confirmation of their own views and dear old Paul (who is now, incidentally, a distinguished don with several learned tomes to his credit which to my shame I have never perused) carried on and on until I felt my eyes drooping and within a short time I was deep in the arms of Morpheus.
I awoke when I felt my shoulder being gently shaken and a voice coming through the mists of semi-consciousness saying: 'Andrew, Andrew, wake up. Oh my, oh my!' Then I heard giggling and I woke up with a start. There in front of me were Lucy and Louella, both heartily laughing, and Paul was also standing there with a smile upon his face.
'Ladies, you must forgive me,' I blurted out. 'Paul was giving me a dissertation upon the role of the novelist when 'I, er, I…'
'Went to sleep on me!' Paul grinned and it was typical of the fellow that he had not taken offence at my rudeness. 'Now, don't worry, Andrew, Lucy has introduced me to this charming young lady and indeed has invited me to take tea with her guest. You too of course are invited and I can continue my argument if you so wish.'
I smiled weakly and stood up. I saw the volumes that Doctor White had loaned me on the table and I took hold of it. 'Lead the way,' I said. 'And it will be my turn to entertain the company with a reading from a great novelist.'
'That sounds extremely interesting,' said Lucy and I thought I detected a note of irony in her voice but I refrained from comment as we walked towards her rooms which were on the other side of the building.
After we had made ourselves comfortable, Lucy said: 'Did you really mean what you said about giving us a reading?'
'I always mean what I say,' I replied loftily and picked up the book I had taken with me.
'Who is the author?' asked Louella.
'His name is John Cleland,' I said, looking at the cover.
'He was the composer of an erotic novel called Fanny Hill but this extract is from a piece extremely appropriate for Paul as he will soon be an undergraduate at Oxford University and this is entitled Memoirs of an Oxford Scholar!'
Lucy, Louella and Paul settled down whilst I began to read:
'I released her, kissing her again, allowing my hungry lips to travel down to the warm spot in her throat where the twin pulses race in uneven tempo.
'My impatience to possess the one who had occupied my dreams impelled me to lift the dear girl, my lips still pressed upon hers, to the waiting bed. Gently, so as not to distress the tender sentiments I saw reflected in her eyes, I unloosed my Chloe's gown and, her passions keeping pace with my own, she unfastened the stays and lay back, her lovely body but barely concealed by the near-transparent shift. I made haste to remove my own shirt and breeches, and seeing Chloe's hand move towards the fastening at the bodice of her shift, I helped her to undo them and to remove the last hindrance to my first sight of that body for which I had so long suffered in denial.
'Her bosom, now bare, was rising in the warmest throbs and presented to my eyes the firm swell of young breasts, such as must be imagined on the most beautiful of goddesses. Their whiteness, their delicate fashioning, were all that man had ever dreamed of in his most fantastical imaginings. Their rosy nipples, surmounting the pale mounds of taut flesh, added to the final ravishment to my eye and the most exquisite of pleasures to my roaming hands. She lay there, silent, unresisting of the examination of her body by my lovefilled eyes and my pleasure-ravished hands. Her tender acquiescence to my probings encouraged me to pursue to completion my long-held goal. Taking her small hand in mine, I guided it down to my rod which had by now stretched himself to a fair tallness. The head was extended and blushed a fiery crimson showing the hot rush of blood to its tip. Chloe gasped, pulled away for an instant, then sighed as I placed her sweet hand firmly around the erect shaft, then springing up straight from the wreath of curls that lay at its base. She held her hand still, then by my tender encouragement began to stroke the member softly. Anon, with great fearfulness, she reached her hand down to its base, lingered there in the curly thicket and thence strayed between my thighs. I knew the softness of her fingers as she felt with wonder that globe of wrinkled flesh that held the honey of passion's flowering. Her hand clung to the root of my first instrument, that part in which Nature contained the stores of pleasure and I made her feel distinctly, through the soft outer cover, the pair of round balls that seemed to float within.
'The visit of her warm hands to those impassionable parts had raised my desires to a boiling heat and I, near to overflowing with ungovernable passions, set upon the attainment of my goal.
'Her thighs were already open to my love assaults in obedience to the irreversible laws of Nature. I lowered myself between them, and for the first time did the hard bone of my instrument feel the wiry curls that hid Chloe's full-pouted lips. Pressing on, that instrument drove at her breech, conformed to the dictates of Nature, yet shielded over with Nature's own device. I pushed vigorously, yet came against a wall which would not open to admit me.
'I begged my Chloe to bear with patience as I reached for a pillow to put beneath her buttocks, thus to make a pointblank aim at the most favourable elevation. Again, I lowered myself between Chloe's spread thighs, and rested the tip of my machine against that tiny cleft. So small was the slit that I could scarcely count upon the accuracy of my aim. But assuring myself, I stroked forward with violent energy. My rod's immense stiffness surged forth with implacable fury, wedged against, then rent, the seal that had denied me access. This furious stroke gained me entrance to the tip alone but following well the initial insertion I at once stroked again vigorously and aggressively, increasing the advantage just gained. Inch by inch, achieved with violent thrusts, I was at last in possession of that treasured prize.